20 May 2013

A Social Justice Lens to Philanthropy

Why all NPOs should use it

When
nonprofit organizations engage in philanthropy they usually receive
positive responses from society. The philanthropic activities of these
organizations are said to contribute to the social good and benefit the
communities they intend to support. However, recent studies have shown
that the current top-down approach to strategic philanthropy limits its
overall effectiveness, leading to a widening disparity between the
amount of money invested in communities and what is actually being
accomplished. That is to say, NPOs that simply donate money are actually
very disconnected from the communities they intend to support. In
addition, their solutions are often short-term focused and could be a
lot more effective. What these NPOs need to realize is that their
approach falls short in a crucial field, namely that of social justice.
They need to apply what has been referred to as a ‘social justice lens’.

Often
NPOs have good intentions, but their linear, top-down approaches have
often proven ineffective. Instead NPOs should follow a bottom-up
approach by placing the needs of the communities as their starting point
and design their projects based on these needs. This also relates to
the notion of human-centered design on which I have made a previous blog post. Looking at the needs of communities this way is
through the above mentioned social justice lens. Social justice implies
that NPOs aim to generate radical changes in the existing power
structures between donors and communities. The communities should not
only be given (financial) support, but mainly the means they need to
break free from the traditional relationship with their NPOs. That is to
say, in the future they will not need the support of NPOs anymore,
because social justice philanthropy has made them independent from NPO
support. This focus on social justice will generate better structural
long-term solutions for communities and ensures that the money that is
donated to the projects is more effectively allocated to the intended
purposes. It is thus essential that the technocratic view of social
change be replaced by social justice philanthropy.

i-kifu
recognizes the significance of a social justice lens in terms of NPOs
trying to support communities. Therefore, i-kifu tries to select NPOs that use a bottom-up social justice approach to their
projects. That is to say, they are screened by i-kifu if their
activities effectively contribute to the long-term social good, and the
NPOs are also obliged to post monthly activities reports for their
donors. Structural changes are ultimately what communities are helped by
the most, as this actually helps them to become self-supporting in the
future.